Boy meets girl, but boy cannot get girl easily. Instead he has to traverse through a series of obstacles to win her affections. Sound familiar? It should do. The whole "boy meets girl" storyline has featured many times before, whether it be in films, books or, in this case, games. However, it's nice to see a predictable premise have a bit of a change applied to it. A rather bizarre one in this case.
Presenting "Boy Loves Girl", an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad title where you get to play as a lovestruck boy who is trying to catch up with the object of his affections-the girl. Working as an infinite running game, Boy Loves Girl on first glance isn't that much different to the hoards of other infinite running games available on the App Store (such as Jetpack Joyride, which is an excellent game). However, what it lacks in uniqueness in the platform it chooses to be, it definitely makes up for it in other areas.
The game tackles the tried and tested formula of infinite runners by adding in a unique, colourful and somewhat bizarre style. In this instance, the boy is not just trying to run through an infinite scrolling level, avoiding clouds and other obstacles, he has to do all of this whilst pulling along the moon tied to a piece of string (for what reason, I don't know). Oh, and the moon cannot hit any of said obstacles either. That's where the trickiness comes in.
Controlling the moon involves simply swiping it up and down. Occasionally the swiping isn't as accurate as it should be, which harbours some frustration, especially when it results in you losing the level. Other than this though, the controls are pretty straightforward and work, for the most part, how you would expect them to-efficiently. Other than making the moon avoid obstacles, it can also catch "smiles", but other than that, it's down to making sure the moon doesn't hit something during your journey.
Boy Loves Girl contains a charming premise, one which on first glance may sound a little too mushy for some. At the beginning of each group of levels, the object of your affection will exclaim that she wants a special item before you're able to meet her. The level then begins, with the aim to not only get yourself and the moon safely to her in one piece, but have her desired gift ready to present to her. However, she's not an easy catch. Collect her gift and she'll rush off again after proclaiming that she needs yet another gift. Like Zelda is to Link, this girl is playing it hard to get!
Each level contains objectives which you will aim to meet. These can be related to the clouds or catching smiles, and the fulfilling these objectives counts towards giving you a better star rating at the end of the level. A nice touch is that each cloud generates a different activity. For example, tap a storm cloud three times and it'll burst. As I already mentioned, your aiming to get all three stars at the end of the level. If you manage to achieve this, a bonus section will be activated, where the boy gets to try out the "she loves me, she loves me not" flower petal picking game, where you have the chance to win a heart.
Aesthetically, the game is a bright, colourful and cute looking affair, and simplicity, for the most part, wins here. It's a crisp, eye-catching style which works. The only criticism is that at times the visuals look a little too simplistic, and I think adding some facial features to the boy would have helped a lot too, but then perhaps I'm nit-picking.
As for the audio, the sound effects are fine, but it would have been nice to have some actual music included whilst you are running through each level. This just makes the background sound effects sound more prominent, and it just feels a little lacking without one. However, you can listen to iTunes whilst you play, so if you wish to generate your own soundtrack, then it works brilliantly.
Overall, Boy Loves Girl is a harmless, enjoyable running romp. Whilst it may not be unique (but then infinite running games are always going to be a hard one to crack in terms of uniqueness), it packs plenty of charm. It's a shame that there is no soundtrack, and that at times the swiping can be a little temperamental, as this would have been an even better game. However, criticisms aside, this is enjoyable enough, and the bizarre moon-steering premise won me over.
Boy Loves Girl is available from the App Store, but a Lite version has now been made available. This Lite version includes the first 13 levels of the game, endless mode challenges, and bonus levels.
Crazy Dave, one of the characters from Plants vs. Zombies has released a single. As bizarre as it sounds, Crazy Dave's first single, called "Wabby Wabbo" is available to download exclusively on iTunes. All proceeds for the track to a charity called Concern Worldwide, an organization that assists poverty stricken countries.
PopCap have announced that Crazy Dave's music video has hit a whopping 465,000 views on YouTube so far, and the track can be downloaded any-time from now until the 22nd December. Check out the video below!
Fallout: New Vegas graphic novel All Roads was already available with the Fallout: New Vegas Collectors Edition, which I am sure many fans decided to purchase. However, the graphic novel is now available to download for those who missed out on originally grabbing it.
Available from Dark Horse Digital or iTunes for $2.99/£1.90, Fallout: New Vegas All Roads was written by the game's Creative Director, Chris Avellone. The artwork is provided by Jean Diaz (Incorruptable) and Wellington Alves (Shadowland: Blood on the Streets).
Before you decide to commit to 48 pages of Fallout, you may want to take a look at the preview at Dark Horse Digital. Whatever you decide though, you cannot go wrong for such a low price.
There are plenty of rhythm games out there-take Rockband and Guitar Hero as prime examples, but there are many that somehow escaped the radar. Audiosurf may be pretty successful now, but upon it's release, it could definitely be classed in the underdog category.
Released on Steam, Audiosurf allows players to experience their music collection in a fun and addictive new way. Audiosurf takes (almost) any song and incorporates it into the game. Perhaps the most fun comes in waiting to see what kind of track the game has generated depending on the song, and it is so easy to get absorbed for a long amount of time in the gameplay.
To look at, Audiosurf is very similar to racing game Wipeout, but this is no straight forward racing game. Players use either the keyboard or mouse to move a futuristic looking craft left, right or to the middle on a floating track in order to pick up brightly coloured bars. The bars coincide with your chosen musical track, and the distance between them decreases the faster the track is. Slower songs tend to make your craft float slowly uphill, whilst faster songs or segments rapidly build up pace downhill. Like other rhythm games, faster songs are definitely much more fun, but a real sense of challenge lies in many of these tracks.
To put it simply, Audiosurf's main objective is to collect points as you navigate your craft through a track. Blocks can often be cleared by matching colours into groups of three, thus allowing the bricks to disappear. Bolder colours, such as red and yellow are worth more (these are considered the trickier blocks to hit), and the more blocks you collect without crashing into a fake one, the higher your combo score will be. A little bit of fun competition between friends is added in the form of scoreboards, where players can aim to beat their friends scores on particular tracks.
Although Audiosurf is a lot of fun, it isn't without it's drawbacks. First of all, the game has a tendency to lag on some of the faster songs. This in turn makes the track fall out of sync with the music a little, which can be somewhat frustrating. Occasionally the game generates blank tracks with my chosen music file not playing, or it freezes midway through a song. Again, a little frustrating, but thankfully this is not too common. The last downside is the syncing issue. As previously mentioned, Audiosurf analyses your music to generate a track, but sometimes the blocks do not follow the beat particularly well.
Apart from a small variety of modes to plough your way through, Audiosurf isn't a particularly large game to perhaps many people. However, this seems completely irrelevant when it is so easy to immerse yourself in this enjoyable musical experience for long periods of time. The game is not without it's glitches, which seems a terrible shame considering that for the most part, the gameplay is satisfying enough. There is never a shortage of tracks to mess around with, as Audiosurf allows for the majority of songs in a users library (I've only found two songs in my iTunes library deemed incompatible so far), as well as weekly free downloads of tracks via Audiosurf radio.
Music fans will probably love this somewhat relaxing experience. The vivid HD colours combined with music of your choice is appealing enough. It does suffer from a few technical issues, and may chug a little if your system isn't that powerful, but Audiosurf gives you a brand new way of experiencing your own music. Oh, and it's pretty cheap on Steam too.
